The Supreme Court delivered yet another huge victory for the country on Thursday when they shot down a lawsuit filed by the Mexican government against U.S. gun makers. It ruled that a 2021 lawsuit from our so-called buddies across the southern border against seven gun manufacturers here is barred under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
“As required by a federal statute, Mexico seeks to show (among other things) that the defendant companies participated in the unlawful sale or marketing of firearms,” Justice Elena Kagan went on to say in the court’s opinion. “More specifically, Mexico alleges that the companies aided and abetted unlawful sales routing guns to Mexican drug cartels. The question presented is whether Mexico’s complaint plausibly pleads that conduct. We conclude it does not.”
The big complaint is that most of the guns used in crime in Mexico come from the United States, thus, it’s our gun makers fault that so much violence happens there. The PLCAA, which was originally passed in 2005, protects firearm makers from getting sued due to the misuse of their weapons. Like selling them illegally to bad guys in Mexico.
Mexico’s government was trying to make the case that their lawsuit was an exception in the law where manufacturers “knowingly violated” statutes that are related to selling or marketing guns.
“But that exception, if Mexico’s suit fell within it, would swallow most of the rule,” Kagan stated in the opinion. “We doubt Congress intended to draft such a capacious way out of PLCAA, and in fact it did not.”
According to CBS News, between 200,000 and 500,00 guns manufactured here in the United States get trafficked to Mexico every year. There’s actually only one gun store in Mexico, so I guess that makes sense.
“Mexico has not met that bar,” Kagan continued. “Its complaint does not plausibly allege the kind of ‘conscious . . . and culpable participation in another’s wrongdoing’ needed to make out an aiding-and-abetting charge.”
“When a company merely knows that some bad actors are taking advantage of its products for criminal purposes, it does not aid and abet. And that is so even if the company could adopt measures to reduce their users’ downstream crimes,” Kagan said as she wrapped up the opinion.
If bad guys take guns and sell them illegally across the border, that has nothing to do with our firearm manufacturers. Just like it’s not the fault of a pharmaceutical company if people prescribed Adderall decide instead of taking it, they’re going to sell it on the street corner.
People are responsible for their own actions. You can’t play an endless game of pass the buck.
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